Science – Page 31 – Southern Fried Science

The incredible biodiversity of Aquaman’s variant cover: Episode 2

May 6, 2014May 5, 2014 Andrew Thaler

Welcome back to another exciting installment of the incredible biodiversity of this incredible Aquaman cover. Today we’re investigating species 4 through 6, where we’ll meet one of my favorite mid-water fish.

4. Fangtooth (Anoplogaster cornuta)

With the largest tooth-length-to-body ratio of any fish, the fangtooth has earned its menacing name. Unfortunately, this intimidating creature barely reaches 18 centimeters in length, hardly the massive, Batman-swallowing maw illustrated to the right. Fangtooths are among the deepest swimming fish. They can be found as far as 5000 meters down, though they are more common in the midwater (200-2000 meters).

The incredible biodiversity of Aquaman’s variant cover

May 5, 2014May 5, 2014 Andrew Thaler 2 Comments

Popular Culture, Science

Aquaman #31 variant cover. Art by Mike Allred.

Aquaman. Wow. Artist Mike Allred has seriously outdone himself with this incredible variant cover to Aquaman #31, featuring a 75th anniversary tribute to Batman as well as an incredible pastel array of deep-sea creatures. What truly amazing about this cover is that each one of these animals is a real living denizen of the deep right here, on Earth Prime. Sure, the scale might be a little off, and it’s unlikely that a scale worm could swallow a Bat-thyscaph, but the salient details are uncanny. Join me on a tour of the 18 wonderful animals featured on this sure-to-be epic installment of Aquaman’s ocean-spanning adventures. Today we’re looking at the first three, including one of my all time favorite marine organisms.

Florida fisherman catches an 18 foot goblin shark, the second ever caught in the Gulf of Mexico

May 2, 2014May 2, 2014 David Shiffman 5 Comments

Blogging, Science

Last week, commercial fisherman Carl Moore was fishing for royal red shrimp off the coast of Key West Florida. When he pulled up a net from more than 2,000 feet, Moore had caught something other than just shrimp. In his net was an unusual looking enormous fish—a goblin shark more than 18 feet long. As … Read More “Florida fisherman catches an 18 foot goblin shark, the second ever caught in the Gulf of Mexico” »

Documenting Deep Sea Drama: Pursuing the Reality of Ocean Acidification

April 28, 2014April 28, 2014 Guest Writer

Science

Kaitlin Kovacs is a researcher for U.S. Geological Survey – Southeast Ecological Science Center. While she currently works in a deep-sea benthic ecology lab, her previous science adventures have led her to study artificial reefs in Florida, coral reef restoration in the Maldives, and coastal ecosystems in the U.S. Virgin islands. With her marine science background, Kaitlin is keen on using outreach and education to help engage local communities in marine conservation efforts.

The ideas expressed below do not represent U.S. Geological Survey.

In the cult Wes Anderson film, The Life Aquatic, there is a scene in which a documentary film maker asks the protagonist, Steve Zissou (clearly a spoof of Jacques Cousteau) what the scientific purpose of his mission to kill the endangered Jaguar shark would be. The eccentric Zissou (brilliantly portrayed by Bill Murray) answers simply, “Revenge.”

The humor here is that scientific missions are rarely so openly coupled with emotion. And yet, the quirky marine biologist does not bother to hide that he is consumed with emotion after his partner is eaten by a shark. His anger and sadness fuel his scientific objective.

It’s illegal for anglers to land hammerheads in Florida. It’s time that media coverage pointed that out.

April 24, 2014May 5, 2014 David Shiffman 18 Comments

Conservation, Science

On January 1st, 2012, new Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission regulations came into effect, making it illegal for fishermen to land great, smooth, or scalloped hammerhead sharks in Florida waters. The legal term “land” is clearly defined in the Florida Code:

“Land,” when used in connection with the harvest of marine organisms, means the physical act of bringing the harvested organism ashore”

“Harvest” means the catching or taking of a marine organism by any means whatsoever, followed by a reduction of such organism to possession. Marine organisms that are caught but immediately returned to the water free, alive, and unharmed are not harvested”

Florida code section 68B-44 (emphasis mine)

In other words, if a fish is brought out of the water, it is “landed”. If anglers stop the act of releasing a fish to measure it or take a photo, it is not “immediately released.” If a fish isn’t “immediately returned alive and unharmed” (and if the extremely physiologically stressful act of bringing a hammerhead out of the water results in it dying after release, it was not released “unharmed,”) it is harvested. If you drag the shark out of the water and leave it there until it stops moving long enough that you feel safe to approach it, that is not an “immediately released” animal, and it isn’t an animal that is “released unharmed.” Landing and/or harvesting hammerhead sharks is illegal. This is clear under the law, and has been confirmed by numerous consultations with an FWC Law Enforcement official.

Collecting organisms to save their species

April 21, 2014April 21, 2014 Guest Writer 3 Comments

Blogging, Conservation, Science

Dr.Prosanta Chakrabarty is an Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University and an ichthyologist and evolutionary biologist. He is also Curator of Fishes at LSU’s Museum of Natural Science. You can learn more about him from his website www.prosanta.net and follow him on Twitter @LSU_FISH.

A recent piece in Science (Minteer et al. 2014) titled “Avoiding (Re)extinction” advocated avoiding collecting specimens for the sake of confirming the existence of a species. In lieu of killing and collecting the animal the authors suggest using “high-resolution photography, audio recording, and nonlethal sampling.” As a natural history curator of fishes I found this to be a pretty bad idea.

My PhD students (Bill Ludt and Caleb McMahan) in Costa Rica collecting specimens for their thesis projects. These guys better not just come back with pictures.

I don’t like killing animals, I was a strict vegetarian for 10 years (now I just eat sustainable seafood – hey, I live in Louisiana). I certainly wouldn’t want to endanger a species by over collecting it. I know of no scientific collectors who kill rare animals just so he or she can say they have it in their collections. We collect for a few simple reasons: because specimens are not available otherwise via loan, or additional specimens are needed for a comparative study, or because we need vouchers as evidence of the existence of the taxon.

I’ve collected rare species in the past, particularly some of the cavefishes I work on. For one of these species, Typhleotris mararybe, we collected the only two specimens we or anyone ever saw. We were in a very remote part of Madagascar and we were only allowed to collect two specimens from any given locality. I knew these individuals were part of a species new to science as soon as I looked at them. Did removing two samples place this species at risk of extinction? Guessing the population was much larger than what we found just at the surface, I would suppose not. What were we to do? Not collect them and just take pictures? We wouldn’t have been able to do the necessary comparative descriptive analysis to actually prove their novelty required by the ICZN (International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature). We collected these specimens so that we could formally describe this new and fantastic new species so that the world can be aware of their existence and so that measures can be put in place to conserve them and study them further.

Distracted by abstracts: Tips for writing a good abstract for a scientific conference

April 7, 2014September 2, 2014 Chris Parsons 4 Comments

Blogging, Science

Dr. Chris Parsons has been involved in whale and dolphin research for over two decades and has been involved in research projects in every continent except Antarctica. Dr. Parsons is an Associate Professor at George Mason University as well as the undergraduate coordinator for their environmental science program. He’s a member of the scientific committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), has been involved in organizing the International Marine Conservation Congress (IMCC) (the world’s largest academic marine conservation conference) and is currently the Conference Chair and a Governor of the Society for Conservation Biology. In addition, Dr. Parsons has published over 100 scientific papers and book chapters and has written a textbook on marine mammal biology & conservation.

I have just read and reviewed through close to 100 scientific abstracts for a conference, and my main conclusion is that ” ‘abstract’ – this does not mean what you think it means!”

An abstract is supposed to be a concise summary of your entire paper or study. Basically a written version of the 30 second “elevator pitch”. In these days of information overload there is so much emphasis on publishing, and so many journals willing to accommodate, the number of articles in scientific fields has increased rapidly. As a result, academics are increasingly reading no further than the abstract, and often only reading the title. To test this I looked at some of my papers where the website they were hosted by kindly provided statistics on abstract page views and actual download rates. The download rates were approximately only 10% that of the abstract views across the papers (and I am naively hopeful that at least some of a downloaded paper will be read). The figures were similar for other articles, so it wasn’t just my papers. So 90% of people who see your work probably won’t go beyond your abstract. This makes it vitally important that all the information you want to convey about your work is in the abstract.

However, in a frighteningly high proportion of abstracts the key results and conclusions of studies are not even mentioned. One of the abstracts I read in this latest batch noted that the methods, results and the conclusions of the study “would be discussed”. As an abstract this is useless. Too frequently place holder abstracts are submitted to conferences, with the assumption that results will magically appear before the meeting. But if you don’t manage to get that analysis done, you’ll be giving a presentation that will be lacking, will embarrassing you and damage your career. Moreover, a lot more people will see your abstract than will actually get to your presentation, so professional opinions may be made on you by the quality of your abstract rather than the final presentation. Plus abstract books are physical entities, whether electronic or hard copy, and will be around a lot longer than your 10 minute presentation. So for your professional image and also for the sake of communicating your study it is in your interests to produce a good abstract.

With that in mind, here are some suggestions on abstract structure.

Deep sea sharks: Do they survive?

April 2, 2014 Guest Writer

Conservation, Science

Brendan Talwar is a graduate student at the Florida State University Coastal & Marine Lab studying Ecology and Evolution. Hispast experiences in diverse marine ecosystems have led to his current research interests in deep sea fisheries management. His thesis work will take place in the Gulf of Mexico and Exuma Sound while working closely with collaborators at the Cape Eleuthera Institute and The Island School, where he will use this project to teach an Applied Research course.

Imagine it is a crisp, sunny, warm spring day and you’re out on the flats hoping a trout rips your topwater minnow to pieces. Out of a deep pocket fringed by oyster bars, a fish erupts from the mirrored surface and engulfs your bait. You win the fight, measure and bag the yellow-mouthed speckled trout, and repeat.

An hour later, you snag an undersized mackerel near the gills and reel it in for a few photos before throwing it back under the assumption that it will survive, grow, and eventually reproduce. You keep fishing and hope for the best, but find yourself wondering if it truly survived until the end of the day. What if it didn’t? Well, you didn’t mean to catch the fish. You didn’t mean for it to experience a fight-or-flight response, for its blood pH to drop, or for its lactic acid to build up. You were targeting 15” trout, and catching the mackerel was an accident. If the fish didn’t survive, then your daily catch represents a greater impact on local fish populations than the simple number you took home for supper.

How to protect yourself from Zombie Dolphins without violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act

April 1, 2014March 31, 2014 Andrew Thaler 3 Comments

Science

They rise from the deep with gnashing teeth and hissing blowholes. They stagger through the shallows, hunting for human flesh, piercing the air with their high pitched moan. They are dead but not dead. They are Zombie Dolphins.

And you can’t fight them, because they are protected.

No, harassing a shark for fun is not ethically equivalent to scientific research that helps conserve a species

March 26, 2014March 27, 2014 David Shiffman 18 Comments

Blogging, Conservation, Science

Last month, I wrote an article for Scientific American that I shouldn’t have had to write. In it, I argued that riding, poking, prodding or otherwise harassing a free-swimming large predatory animal for fun is a bad idea. I do mean “argued;” believe it or not, there are people who strongly disagree with me. In my article, I was very general and diplomatic, and I took pains to avoid naming names.

However, my article was at least partially inspired by the disrespectful, potentially dangerous, and very public behavior of one person: the editor of Shark Diver magazine, Eli Martinez. Eli recently wrote an article for Medium, in which he stated that: “Look, I have no problem with touching sharks and I do not have any problem with other people touching sharks.” He also notes that ” I just think riding sharks is disrespectful to the animals .” He has also shared the following photos (and many, many more like them) on his Facebook page, photos showing behavior he does not seem to consider disrespectful.